Friday, January 02, 2015

A few conservative outlets have been mentioning Jim Jones and Jonestown relative to the "guilt by association" scam the MSM attempted to falsely create to start the new year relative to Steve Scalise. Kinda looks like nasty partisan politics with heavy handed MSM involvement will be part of the new year too. Damn! I was so certain they would resolve to mend their ways after the people had spoken so loudly in November!

I had just started IBM in '78. Still a Democrat as far as I knew, still assuming that whatever Uncle Walter Cronkite said really was "the way it was". For over 30 years at IBM, whenever they came out with some "flavor of the day" program -- "Zero Defects", "Six Sigma", "Q-pride", etc etc, those of us that really built things used to question each other if it started to look like someone really believed the current tripe, with the phrase "Did you drink the Kool-Aide?".

The "Kool-Aide" was a reference to the mass suicide at Jonestown where 918 people died -- largest single loss of US civilian lives in one day since Pearl Harbor until 9-11.

Since I didn't pay much attention, I knew that a congressman was killed and accepted the media reports that it was "a bunch of RELIGIOUS nuts" -- now I find out what BRAND of nuts it really was. What it preached was "Apostolic Socialism" ... the Temple preached that "those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought to enlightenment — socialism". Hmmm

So what kind of politicians might be associated with this fine group? Oh, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Jerry Brown, etc. I love the Mondale quote ...“Knowing of your congregation’s deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me.”

Wow, what a wonderful thing that Mondale was "inspired" by a nut and his followers, 918 of which drank poisoned Kool-Aide! Sorta brings a tear to your eye. Good thing that kind of association wasn't in any way brought out as a concern relative him running for president!

Somehow, the branding of Jonestown as "Religious Nuts" fit the narrative of the day a lot better than words like "Marxist, Socialist, Communist, etc" and association with Carter, Mondale, Brown, etc. Isn't that a surprise? There was no talk radio, no Fox and no Internet then, so nobody was the wiser.

And so it goes, what Walter said was yet again the way it wasn't in 1978.